SITTYTON TO ABERDEEN. 169 



tolling the merry peal on account of the peace. 

 " Old Staley," as he was called, often said that this 

 merry peal was a sorrowful peal to him, for it cost 

 him 3,000. From my father's books it appears 

 that the expense of travelling was trifling from the 

 north in the end of the last and beginning of the pre- 

 sent century. Men's wages were Is. 6d. a-day, and 

 they received no watching money. There were no 

 toll-bars. The roadsides and the commons afforded 

 the cattle their supply of food. 



After his father's death,in 1830, Mr. M'Combie set- 

 tled at Tilly four, and followed, until within the last fif- 

 teen years, the lean cattle trade to which he was bred, 

 besides keeping a few milch cows and grazing 200 or 

 00 cattle. There were invariably 60 horned Aber- 

 deenshire beasts among them, which were generally 

 the " tops" at the October Falkirk, and after winter- 

 ing in Cumberland passed on to Barnet in the spring. 

 As a young man he was fond of coursing, and 

 once won, and again divided the All-aged Stakes at 

 Turriff with Amy of his Buy-a-Broom. sort, which he 

 still remembers " as going from the slips like a shot." 

 He also delighted in shooting, and made some very large 

 bags, but his health has been more delicate of late 

 years, and all his field sports have been gitfen up one by 

 one. The Vale of Alford Society was his first show- 

 ground, and he had not been much more than two 

 years at Tilly four before he was placed first with a 

 bull which he had purchased from Morayshire. He 

 won again in 1837, and since then he has gradually 



